ABSTRACT
Nowadays varying degrees of road crashes have been recorded from both developed and developing nations of the world. Crashes especially those that involve loss of lives around the world and in particular in developing countries is alarming. The existing solution is in-vehicle accident detection system, which is expensive. In this research work, a less expensive and system that can be widely used to reduce the time to report and respond to vehicle crash was developed. The system consists of two mobile-phone-based applications, the User or victim’s App and the agency App. The victim App uses the in-phone accelerometer and General Packet Service (GPS) to detect a crash and its location coordinates respectively, and then a notification is sent to a concerned agency. A maximum of three concerned agencies location coordinates with their respective phone numbers were stored on a firebase (cloud database) account for mapping to the closest crash site and then send an SMS with the location coordinates and the Google map image of the crash site in real-time . The agency App is used to register an agency on the firebase. To be able to view the Google map images, each of the concerned agencies had a smart phone. The two Apps were developed and implemented using Android Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE), with Java programming language for the events and Extended Mark-Up Language (XML) for the interface design. The implementation was strictly on Android smart phones with minimum Application Programming Interface (API) level 16. The system validation proves high sensitivity of 93%, accuracy of 91%, precision of 92% and specificity of 87% which shows that the system is efficient and effective.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Accidents caused by vehicular traffics results in a lot of human injuries and death. Delay in dispatching emergency aids to accident location is one of the most important indicators for survival rate. A vehicle equipped with a system that can automatically detects accident and quickly alert first responders is one of the ways used to eliminate such delays, (White et al., 2011). The majority of vehicles using our roads do not have this automatic detection system and it is expensive to retrofit for older vehicles.
Furthermore, traffic is on the rise as the demand for vehicles is getting higher, so the means of transportation needs to be improved upon. Accident victims need to get help on time to reduce fatality rate. Figure 1.1 shows a crashed vehicle with an in-built accident detection system. The crash activates auto dialer inside the car and sends GPS location and the vehicle registration number to a first responder, an insurance company if the vehicle has insurance and to family members.
However, various accident detection systems have been proposed with different methodologies. One of such methods is the use of the Arduino micro controller with other components like the GPS receiver and GSM/GPRS components in other to detect and send location of an accident for quick response of first responders. Real-time control of vehicle speed automatically could be very difficult to realize, instead of controlling the vehicle speed automatically, a system that detects accidents and also keep the driver of a vehicle on alert about the speed limit was proposed. The system can detects when a driver of a vehicle exceeds the speed limits and ignores the warning. Using the GSM technology incorporated in the system design, an SMS will be sent to a patrol corps with the location of the speeding vehicle, (Narendar and Teja, 2013).
In a world that is becoming more motorized, impact sensors in conjunction with GPS offers a timely, objective and potentially acceptable method of detecting and reporting accidents, (Njuguna, 2012).
In addition, smart phones are cheap and easy to purchase in comparison with other traffic accident prediction system, this makes them a very good alternative to use. Moreover, even if a car is not fitted with an accident detection and notification system, smart phones generally travel with their owners to detect accidents, (White et al., 2011).
1.2 Statement of the Problem
When a vehicular accident occurs, it is usually the good Samaritans that report such accidents to the emergency responders. The moment between when an accident happens to the time where such emergency centers are notified is a key indicator to saving lives. Waiting for good Samaritans to report accident will lead to wasting precious time which the victims may not have. Having an automatic notification system that can notify the emergency center that is closest to the accident site will go a long way in reducing the level of causalities. In addition, the various in-built car crash detection and alerting systems are mostly available in luxury cars. These cars are mostly saloon and have maximum sitting capacity from 5-9 people commuting per vehicle. The majority of vehicles on our roads don’t have this facility. Android smart phones are one of the cheapest smart phones available and it is believed that at least one in every five people possesses it. Utilizing these facilities in android smart phone to develop a system that can detect accidents will reduce the fatality rate of accidents.
1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Research Study
The aim of this research work is to develop a vehicle crash location detection and alerting system using android smart phone and GPS technologies.
The specific objectives of the study were:
i. To set an acceleration threshold for a smart phone that can detect crash using the smart phone accelerometer and GPS technologies.
ii. To develop an algorithm that maps an accident location to an emergency center closest to the accident location and send notification to that center.
iii. To evaluate the performance of the developed system using accuracy, precision, speed, sensitivity and cellular network type as the performance metrics.
1.4 The Significance of the Study
The research work will eliminate the delay in notifying an accident to first responders such as the Nigerian Road Safety Cooperation and Red Cross. Automatic notification using the android smart phone and the GPS technologies will provide timely and accurate information to these organizations and eliminate delay in time between the occurrence of an accident to when such accident is reported. This will go a long way in saving more lives of accident victims because the required aid and attention will be brought to the accident site immediately.
1.5 Scope of the Study
In the proposed system, only android smart phones were chose and used for the system test. Even though there are other smart phones, the availability and the ease of use of the android technology prompted the decision. A remote controlled toy car was used to simulate the vehicle that will be involved in an accident; this is because using a real vehicle will be expensive to manage.
1.6 Limitation of the Research Study
The initial idea was to design a system that would be able to use dynamic form of addressing to store the addresses of the agencies on a Google cloud firebase. But due to financial constrain involved in securing full functionality of the firebase from Google and the complications in making the various components of the system to communicate, static addressing was later adopted. Dynamic addressing would allow the emergency centers to move around and still receive notification of an accident based on their distances from the accident location. In addition, the system was tested with a radio controlled toy car which cannot give a perfect simulation of accident.
1.7 Definition of Terms
Alert System: A system that can send notification out to targeted persons or devices when it is triggered.
Global Positioning System (GPS): A satellite and radio navigation based system that is owned and regulated exclusively by USA Air force.
Accelerometer: Is an instrument that is used to measure moving or vibrating body acceleration in all directions.
Smart Phone: A mobile phone that performs like a computer in many different ways, typically, having internet access, a moderate to large touch screen and an operating system that can run applications that are downloaded from different sources.
Firebase: Is a cloud-hosted NoSQL real-time database that enables information to be stored and synchronized in real-time.
Mobile Application (App): These are developed computer programs or software application that are designed and are capable of running on devices that are mobile such as phone.
False Negative: An instance where the mobile-phone does not detect a crash even though a crash has occurred
False Positive: An instance where the mobile phone detects a crash even though it has not occurred
True Positive: Number of actual crash instances that the system classified as crashes
True Negative: Number of non-crash instances that the system classified as false crash
This material content is developed to serve as a GUIDE for students to conduct academic research
VEHICLE CRASH LOCATION DETECTION AND ALERTING SYSTEM USING ANDROID SMART PHONE AND GPS TECHNOLOGIES
Project 4Topics Support Team Are Always (24/7) Online To Help You With Your Project
Chat Us on WhatsApp » 09132600555
DO YOU NEED CLARIFICATION? CALL OUR HELP DESK:
09132600555 (Country Code: +234)
YOU CAN REACH OUR SUPPORT TEAM VIA MAIL: [email protected]
09132600555 (Country Code: +234)